Sade: A Biography

by Maurice Lever

Book Overview

To some the Marquis de Sade was a monster, to others an apostle of sexual freedom and a literary genius. Lever reconstructs the life of the "divine marquis" in all its splendor and perversity. Named a... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0374202982
• ISBN13: 9780374202989
• Release Date: January 1993
• Publisher: Farrar Straus Giroux
• Length: 626 Pages
• Weight: 2.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.9" x 6.4" x 9.5"

Customer Reviews

Overall a Good Read

Sade has a host of apologists (Roland Bathes, Micheal Foucault, Camus, a lot of the surrealists), intellectuals who see in his porn a sexual liberation. The bio appears to be fair -- it pleads the guy was a good writer but a a bit of a jerk -- but, the thing is, he was more than a bit of a jerk. The writer treats Sade as more of a recalcitrant frat boy than the actual monster that he was. Not enough is made of the fact that if he pulled those stunts today that he did at La Coste, he'd be looking at some serious time. He was responsibile for the death of an infant. Lever doesn't condemn him enough. Andrea Dworkin was a soapbox loon, but i have to say her essay on Sade was more on the mark than books like this. Still, the epistolary fashion of the bio works well, and gives good insight to the times De Sade lived in and the penal system that he had to deal with. Overall a good read.

A Fascinating Historical View of a Monster Unmade

This book was my introduction to the Marquis de Sade. I was expecting (and hoping for) a narrative portrait of the cruel beast so often alluded to in popular culture and vernacular speech, along with a laundry list of his misdeeds. What I got instead was a fascinating life history of a man who was at best a product of his own culture and upbringing, an avaricious, often petty noble, who took the libertinage of many of the members of the Ancien Regime to incredible lengths; at worst he was a captive of his own twisted fantasies, a soul who arguably lacked the even the most basic of built-in moral "stop signs" that most members of society both acknowledge and use as guidance. The most interesting aspect of this voluminous work was the thorough narration of the familial, political and administrative twists and turns that Sade endured during his life. The accurate and detailed accounting of the buildup to the French Revolution was enthralling and unexpected. In summary, if I had thought I was beginning a nearly 600-page history of societal and governmental France, I doubt I would have made it past the Prologue. Having just finished the book, though, I can say that this is one of the most satisfying and informative reads I have ever undertaken.

Whip crack away

Donatien Aldonse Francois, Marquis de Sade, had the dubious honour of being imprisoned by three entirely different French governments: the Old Regime, the First Republic, and the Empire. He also nearly survived them all, dying (in prison) in 1814. He wrote a fantastic amount - his first and most notorious book, The 120 Days of Sodom, was inscribed in microscopic writing on a gigantic roll of paper. Lever's biography steers carefully clear of both condemnation and canonisation, presenting the Marquis as an aristocratic anarchist - totally incapable of bowing to authority or of being "useful" in the robotic utilitarian fashion advocated by the Revolutionary authorities. Accused of no real crimes other than "immorality" and a rather trumped-up charge of assaulting a prostitute, he seems to have been incarcerated mostly thanks to the malignancy of his thoroughly unpleasant mother-in-law; and if Lever does not portray him as particularly likeable, he certainly comes across a!s having wit, plenty of principle and more than his share of guts. And it's hard for any writer to resist admiring a man who produced so much of interest under such adverse conditions. Lever has thoroughly studied the Marquis' letters (at one point he gives a hilarious list of the nicknames Sade bestowed on his wife) and the historical background, which makes for a long, fascinating epic, filled like the Marquis' books with power philosophy, lavatory humour and the invigorating crack of the whip.

A fascinating insight into French culture

Ah, de Sade. Extremist by name, extreme by nature. And there's no doubt that he was extreme. This novel is noteworthy, not because it explains his works, or even attempts to explain the man, but because it details his life in context. It explains Sade, not as the villian that we would expect from his novels, but as a member of the arisocracy of France during the French Revolution. Despised by his contemporaries, this book discusses his life as a real man, and not as a mythical monster. It will be something of a disappointment for those eager for a smutty read, although many of the more sordid details of his exploits are discussed. Instead, it explains his life in the context of his time, and as a result says a lot more about the morals of his persecutors than it does of Sade himself. This is not a sympathetic novel. Rather it is a fascinating account of the life of one of history's blackest names, in one of history's blackest times. A wonderfully readable read.